This coming June will mark the two year anniversary of the Melbourne Cisco Data Center User Group. The first session was back on June 7th 2016 and as with all of the group sessions there were two, one vendor and one community. The vendor session was presented by Chris Gascoigne from Cisco about ACI and Nexus 9k while the community session was from Will Robinson about GNS3 in his homelab. Both session were excellent and a great start for the user group. Not only that but both have since become core to the DCUG with will taking on the role of an organiser for a good while and Chris working his magic behind the scenes to help us get the vendor sessions locked in every month.

Where did it come from

Back in 2016 I attended Cisco Live for the second time but my first as a Cisco Champion. There were not many Cisco Champions in Australia at that time. I believe it was 4 in total, and three of us were due to be at the Cisco Live. Chris Partsenidis was another Cisco Champion based in Melbourne and I was looking forward to meeting him. Prior to the event Chris reached out to me so we could meet up at some point during the week. Unfortunately for Chris has got caught up with network outage issues (Cisco related 🙂 ) that week so he was unable to attend. I met with a Cisco rep that was over from California for the event and collected the Cisco Champion swag which included a Cisco Champion shirt. Following Cisco Live I arranged to meet with Chris over a coffee to exchange the prized shirt. And this meeting is what led to the Cisco Data Center User Group in Melbourne. Over a coffee Chris and I spoke about how we were both relatively new to Melbourne and how we were struggling to find a user group that covered the topics we were interested in. Chris is a network Cisco Champion and I am a data center Cisco Champion. I had been to a number of other user groups and I really enjoyed the VMware User Group (VMUG) so something similar to that was what I had in mind. Chris agreed and so we reached out to Lauren Friedman from Cisco. Lauren has been trying to get something similar going for Cisco at a global level and so we took on the Cisco Data Center User Group for Melbourne and essentially became a guinea pig. We agreed on a format of a vendor and community session, times for each of the presentations and the frequency of the sessions. Since the initial session we’ve had 19 more over the course of the two years and it’s being going solid since the start. Read More

Last year I presented at the local Cisco DCUG to a warm and receptive audience about Cisco UCS Director being deployed on a global scale. At the time I was working for a global pharmaceutical company and following some organisational changes the requirements of the business and in turn IT changed to match. A key part of the changes focused on global standardisation of IT infrastructure to ensure 24 x 7 operational support. The best way to achieve that goal was to look at automation and orchestration. Cisco UCS Director was the tool chosen at the time. UCS Director is an absolute beast of a product and it reflects badly on Cisco as to how they have marketed and managed the product. It has potential to be the one stop shop for infrastructure management.

Concept:

Create a global platform to enable physical and virtual automation based on standardised templates and processes.

The Cisco DCUG has been running for almost a year now and we’ve been very lucky with the support we’ve recieved from both Cisco and the IT community. Back in March, I know I’m well behind the times here due to other commitments, we were immensely privileged to have some top speakers present to the local DCUG.

Cisco Live opening day fell on the same day as our monthly DCUG meeting so it made sense to try to get some of the heavy hitters over from the US to present for us. Cisco DCUG ran with superstars Lauren Malhoit and Remi Phillippe. Lauren is well known within the IT community for her work on the In Tech We Trust podcast but also through her work on ACI. She’s got a course on Pluralsight around ACI if you’re interested in learning more about the Cisco technology. She’s recently jumped into a new role at Techwise TV. Lauren is also the author of a couple of books and an avid blogger for AdaptingIT.com and VirtualizationAdmin.com. Lauren is a massive presence within the tecnology community and I was immensely excited when she agreed to present at the DCUG. Remi is a TME within Cisco’s INSBU and has a heavy focus on the data center analytics platform, Tetration. A massive shout out goes to Rob Tappenden from Cisco in ANZ for helping to organise such quality speakers and initiating the initial contact. A small shout-out (almost at whisper-level) goes to Brett Johnson from vBrownBag for letting us know Lauren was making the trip out to Melbourne.

Cisco Live Melbourne 2017

Cisco Live time has rolled around again for another year. I’ve been really looking forward to this since before the Christmas break and it’s kind of snuck up on me in the end. This year I’ll be taking part in the Data Centre Innovation Day which will provide the opportunity to interact with key Cisco executives and data centre experts on current and emerging challenges and trends.

Last year I spent quite a bit of time interacting with the guys in the World of Solutions and attending some full-on breakout sessions. This year I’ll once again be hitting up some breakout sessions but I also plan on spending more time in the DevNet zone to get up to speed on scripting, Git, REST APIs and DevOps. DevNet was not very large last year but I expect it to be bigger this year and even harder to attend sessions. You cannot book these sessions in advance so it’s first come first served. If you can spare the time though it’s definitely worth your while going.

The sessions I plan to attend this year are focused on Data Centre technology and I’m really keen to learn more on Tetration and Container technology. I’m also looking at Hybrid Cloud integration. My main purpose outside of technical brain dumps is for networking, meeting and interacting with peers and to promote community engagement. It’s also an opportunity to focus on personal development, take some time out of the office to review where I’m at technically and what gaps exist and begin to make plans on what I’d like to focus on in the coming year. As a Cisco Champion for 2017 there’s some special events/treatment at Cisco Live and having the opportunity to meet the other Cisco Champions is too good to miss. Our regular Cisco Data Center UserGroup also takes place on the first night of Cisco Live and we’ve been extremely fortunate to have fantastic presenters, Remi Philippe and Lauren Malhoit. If anyone happens to be in Melbourne and Tuesday 7th please feel free to come along to the Crafty Squire on Russell Street for a 6:30pm start.

This year I’ve taken the plunge to be part of a panel discussing “Build Your Personal Brand with Social Media”. This is part of the Cisco Champions program during Cisco Live. This will be my first time in front of such an audience and I’m both anxious and excited. If you happen to be at Cisco Live on Wednesday drop by the Cisco Think Tank sessions at 2pm.

Last night we hosted the first Cisco Data Center User Group in Melbourne. It was a successful night with a great turn out and excellent interaction and networking between everyone that attended. Everyone was enthusiastic and willing to take part and really mate it a fantastic night.

The user group was formed with the intention to create a space where IT professionals can come together in a relaxed environment to network, have a drink and learn about data center technology. We wanted to have an interactive and social atmosphere and thanks to everyone that attended and took part because that’s exactly what was achieved.

One of the things that I liked most about the meetup was the attendance of people from other community groups. Craig Waters (@cswaters1) from the VMware VMUG community, Brett Johnson (@brettjohnson008) from the vBrownBag community and one of the presenters, Will Robinson, from the NetAppATeam. The support from other communities is great and we really appreciate it.

The night itself began with an introduction from Derek Hennessy (@derekhennessy) and Chris Partsenidis (@cpartsenidis) on how the user group idea was formed. A shout out went to Lauren Friedman (@lauren) from Cisco for her help and support for getting the user group off the ground. We swiftly moved onto the first speaker of the night, Chris Gascoigne (@chrisgascoigne).

Introduction

Chris is a Technical Architect for Cisco ANZ with the Data Center team and has a focus on ACI, Nexus 9000, Automation/Orchestration and DevOps. Chris ran through a few slides on how network engineers can leverage tools such as Puppet, Ansible and Chef to implement the DevOps framework. He then ran through a demo of how to manage a Nexus 9000 switch from a bash shell and deploy Puppet configurations to a switch. Chris also emphasised the need to provide version control, code review and deployment into production. There were a number of questions from the audience as everyone tried to imagine using such tools within their own infrastructure environments. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of Chris’ slidedeck to make available. A special mention goes out to Chris Partsenidis for performing the important task of being a microphone stand through Chris Gascoigne’s demo.

Following Chris’ presentation we took a break and let everyone digest the content and the food as well as order up another drink for the next session. Will Robinson (@oznetnerd) is a Senior Engineer with a focus on networking and storage and a wealth of experience. Will also has a mighty home lab setup and he gave everyone a run through on using GNS3 within his home lab. He really hit home on rethinking the physical and the logical implementations of networks and gave an example of a complex network he’d designed within GNS3. Everyone was really engaged in Wills presentation and it was like a quick fire buzzer round at a quiz following his presentation. He even managed to jokingly make reference to a layer 8 issue for someone using GNS3

GNS3 Connectivity

I’ve uploaded the slidedecks from the night and in the future we hope to capture the presentations on video and make them available as an archive following the events themselves. All in all it was a great night and we believe we have now started to develop a new community. If you’re interested in learning about technology, having a drink and some grub, and meeting other IT professionals and networking then we’re really looking forward to seeing you at the next meeting on Tuesday July 5th.

Next month we’re starting a new user group for Cisco Data Center in Melbourne. This user group is being run by Cisco Champions, myself and Chris Partsenidis. Chris and I met up after the recent Cisco Live in Melbourne and got chatting about how there’s no real community around Cisco technology so we reached out to Lauren Friedman (@lauren). Lauren was super helpful and has supported the creation of Cisco Data Center User Group. This is something that Lauren is working on from a global perspective and we’re delighted to be laying the groundwork in Australia.

This user group is centered around Cisco Next-Generation Data Centers and is for anyone that uses Cisco technology or that of the extended ecosystem. Our meetup is a fantastic opportunity to get to know others in the community over some snacks and beers in a relaxed and social environment. While the group is supported by Cisco, don’t expect sales pitches. We’ll focus on enabling a local community for Cisco Data Center users to share experiences, network and to learn more about both technology and careers. We openly invite submissions for topics and presentations from any members.

Some of the topics we’re looking to cover in the coming months are:

Cisco HyperFlex

DevOps

Cisco Nexus Switching

Big Data Analytics

Data Center Storage

CCNA DC and beyond

Cisco ACI and Nexus 9000

Operations and Data Center Management

HomeLab setup

Exam Preparation and certification

Automation and Orchestration

We’re open to requests from the community for topics of interest

The user group will catch up on the first Tuesday of every month at The Crafty Squire at 127 Russell Street in Melbourne CBD. We’ll be located upstairs in Porter Place. Our first meeting will run be Tuesday June 7th and all meetings will take place between 5:30 and 7:30PM.

More details about the regular meet ups can be found over at Cisco Data Center User Group page on Meetup.com. This page will be updated regularly with the meeting agendas and speakers. We look forward to seeing you there, please don’t be shy and come along to say hello. Welcome to the community.